Okay, so there is MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, blah buh blah buh blah… All of these type of sites have certain things in common, and the most notable one is simple: People spends hours on these sites talking to people, sending messages, changing their profiles, adding photos, looking for hotties, and everything else in between. The other thing that these users have in common is the fact that they sit on their ass while they do all of this “work”, therefore making their life a waste.

Instead of putting on about 10 lbs of worthlessness, instead of spending thirty minutes taking pictures of yourself with stupid expressions or revealing clothes on, instead of stalking that cute girl that sits behind you in class, instead of blogging about how lonely you are…(and it goes on like this), go to MEETin.org and find people that want to socialize outside.

This is a free, clever site dedicated to helping the bulk of America (pun intended) get outdoors and see people in real life. Although they do not have a section for Los Angeles, which is entirely confusing to me, they do have hundreds of major cities and locations to meet real people to go to bars, go hiking, bike riding, surfing, or whatever else people that leave their house may possibly do with other people. They even have groups in Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and will probably expand as the site becomes more popular.

If your lucky enough to live in one of the areas that this site caters to, go ahead and try it out. There are plenty of events that people have gone too, and most are fairly safe and comfortable settings. As you can see here, thousands of people have already participated, and it looks like all the events are pretty fun.

We all should have seen it coming. YouTube, the bastion of all things video and user-created, is now becoming a medium for extremist propaganda. Recently, some Islamic terrorist (truly an oxymoron for people who know better) groups are uploading their anti-American and anti-Western videos to YouTube for a larger audience than the marginal websites they used to be hosted on. I don’t want to go into a ton of detail here – I don’t need to repeat their messages more times than necessary - but the original article gives enough disgusting examples of hate. It’s a tough fight for YouTube, as a statement from the company states, “YouTube has clear terms and conditions which prohibit, amongst other things, hateful content. Our community has been highly effective in policing the site, and YouTube removes videos if our community flags them as inappropriate.” Basically, they’ll only do something if someone else complains first.

Therein lies the only problem with internet and free speech. On the one hand, we’re free to see six-year olds singing Phantom of the Opera or monkeys throwing feces at each other. (Note: I pulled these examples out of my ass and proceeded to look on YouTube for them; it took all of a minute and a half.) Hell, as our sister site Destructoid likes to say, you can see “also cocks” if you’re so inclined. However, this freedom is extended to those who would do harm or promote hatred. Should YouTube be formally policed? Or worse, who would police the police? (Sorry for the overly-serious tone, this is what you get when you’re recovering from teh SARS.)

[via Forbes Online]